Campus Fund, which invests in student-led startups, has raised $10 million (about Rs 75 crore) for its second fund from large institutions, family offices, and general partners of leading funds.

IIFL Wealth, Omidyar Network India, Bharat Shah (former chairman of HDFC Securities), Jaimin Bhatt (CFO, Kotak Mahindra Bank), Kanwajit Singh (founder, Fireside Ventures), Shivkumar Janardhanan (former CEO, Essilor India) participated in the round.

Launched in July 2020, Campus Fund employs students as investors, who scout, evaluate and also get a seat in the decision-making with regard to investments in student-led startups. Its Fund I had a corpus of Rs 7 crore which was invested across 10 startups. With its second fund, Campus Fund will continue to invest at the pre-seed stage.

Startups like Digantara, HealthySure, and Expand My Business from Fund I have gone on to raise follow-on funding from Tanglin Venture Partners, Chiratae Ventures, and Kalaari Capital.

Campus Fund was founded by Richa Bajpai, who co-founded Goodera, a technology platform in the Tech4Good space.

“We worked with over 60 students across the country to scout and evaluate more than 1,600 student-led start-startups in the last two years,” Bajpai said in a statement. “We now have a portfolio of 10 diverse student led startups with strong fundamentals and a potential to shape the future and contribute towards India’s ambition of becoming a $5 trillion economy.”

Campus Fund has a portfolio that has 40% non-tech founders, 30% female co-founders and 30% hardware-first tech-enabled student-led startups.

“We are excited to back Richa and the team at Campus Fund in their mission to promote student entrepreneurship in the country. This will give impetus to the bold young entrepreneurs who are solving important problems in the country and generating employment,” said Sarvesh Kanodia, principal at Omidyar Network India in a statement.